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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29690166">A Dream That Once Was Mine</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/calforniarain/pseuds/calforniarain'>calforniarain</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Minor Angst, No Romance, Parallel Universes, Post-Time Skip, References to Depression, Sad, Sad Ending, Suna Rintarou-centric, Suna as kindergarten teacher, suna and osamu bestfriend</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:08:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,018</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29690166</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/calforniarain/pseuds/calforniarain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is unfair - you gain some and you'll lose some.</p><p>A story of how Suna finding out that not achieving his dream as a professional volleyball player is a better path of his life, and learnt that life is always unfair</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Dream That Once Was Mine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>New notification: </strong>
</p><p>Samu:</p><p>
  <em>“You’re stopping by today?”</em>
</p><p>Suna:</p><p>
  <em>“Nah, one of the parents are still not here so I’m babysitting the kid. Plus, I gotta get ready for tonight’s dinner.”</em>
</p><p>Samu:</p><p>
  <em>“Cool, see ya at dinner then.”</em>
</p><p>A soft purr turned Suna’s attention from his phone to the 5-year-old sleeping on his lap. Being a kindergarten teacher was fun until the parents decided that their jobs are more important than their kids. He was hoping they would at least notify him earlier if they were going to be late but they never bothered with it. <em>“It’s your job as a teacher to keep the kids safe until the parents come to pick them up.”</em> Suna unconsciously rolled his eyes at the thought of the selfish parents who most probably never thought about the life the teachers have outside of their works.</p><p>They were lucky Suna loved kids. Of course they could be annoying at times but they brought joy to his life, they put smile on his face and they are just adorable so he wouldn’t mind looking past the parents’ lack of consideration towards the teachers.</p><p>There were some points in his life where he would regret his decision in becoming a teacher. His dream was to be a professional volleyball player. He used to play volleyball a lot in high school, he believed he was good at it. His team got into the national a few times and at one point Suna felt like volleyball was the only thing he could do in life. He was good at it, hell he was one of the bests.</p><p>His parents, fortunately were very supportive of him. They didn’t mind him spending more time on the court than in class. But he knew very well that they would prefer for him to have a more ‘stable’ and ‘promising’ job and becoming a professional player, unfortunately, was neither stable nor promising for them. </p><p>Suna spent months trying to come up with the best decision, whether he wanted to pursue his dream as a professional player, or get a stable job. Taking his and his parents’ feelings into consideration, he decided that maybe it was best to listen to his parents to, for once, give them what they want, so he settled down with being a teacher.</p><p>He wasn’t sure why he decided to be a kindergarten teacher, he knew it sounded nothing like him, but he made the impulsive decision that working with kids might be better than being surrounded by adults that most of the time are worse than kids.</p><p>Two hours until the kid’s parent picked him up and Suna made his way home. The kindergarten was only a ten minutes-walk from his house and he was thankful for that as he didn’t have to go through the rush hour at the subway station. He would usually stop by his bestfriend, Osamu’s restaurant on his way home after work but he got a dinner with his and Osamu’s parents planned tonight so he needed to get home early to get ready.</p><p>The first thing Suna wanted to do as soon as he got home was to throw himself on his bed and sleep. His body was aching from standing up the whole day, all the running and carrying the kids he did at the kindergarten. He knew if he lay on his bed, even for a second, he would not be able to get up again so he immediately stepped into the shower to freshen up.</p><p>Living alone has its own perks and for Suna, it’s that he could use a whole room as his closet. The wooden floor of the guest bedroom – now closet – was barely visible with all the clothes and laundry baskets laying around. He went through his wardrobe and chose a proper attire for the dinner. It was a casual dinner between family friends so he decided on something casual yet smart – a black button-up paired with a black pants. Suna could already hear Osamu making fun of him on his lack of fashion sense. A soft chuckle escaped his mouth at the thought of his bestfriend. He was on his way out of the room when he noticed a box standing in his way, stopping him in his track.</p><p>The box was unfamiliar. He could not recall how the box got into the room. He crouched down to get a better look and found a small handwriting at the left corner that read his name, <em>Suna Rintarou.</em> The crease between his brows grew deeper, his head tilted as a sign of confusion. <em>“Is this mine? How come I’ve never seen this before?”</em> his brain was working hard trying to point a finger on what exactly the box was and what it contained.</p><p>The familiar sound of his phone ringing brought him back to earth from his thinking cloud so he immediately got up to answer the call. Suna took a last glance at the mysterious box before running to his room as to not miss the call, making a mental note to check the box once he got home later and got ready for the dinner.</p><p>The dinner went on as usual. Atsumu, Osamu’s twin brother, who rarely showed up for these occasions was able to clear his schedule and joined them so the night stretched longer than they expected. Osamu could see that there was something bothering his bestfriend the entire night so he had to ask him about it as he was driving Suna home.</p><p>“You looked out of it tonight. Everything’s fine?”</p><p>The silence proved Osamu right, he knew Suna was too deep in his thoughts to hear his question.</p><p>“Suna!” Osamu raised his voice to get the younger’s attention.</p><p>“Huh?” Suna was clearly surprised as he straightened up in his seat and looked at his bestfriend with a questioning look on his face, eyebrows raised in confusion.</p><p>“You spaced out since earlier. You okay?” Osamu asked again, his voice sounded calmer.</p><p>“Yea…” he paused, thinking to himself whether or not should he tell his bestfriend about the mysterious box that’s been occupying his head the entire night.</p><p>“I’m just a little tired I guess.” A lie, well not entirely because he was tired as he had to stay longer at school since he had to babysit one of the kids, but he decided that he would not bother his bestfriend only for a box.</p><p>“If you say so.” Osamu knew that once Suna says no, it meant no and he would only say the truth when he really felt like it. So there is no use for him to force Suna to say what was bothering him.</p><p>Osamu dropped Suna off in front of his house and immediately drove off. Suna was exhausted, but he knew he would not be able to sleep for the night if he didn’t check what was in the box so he marched towards his closet room as soon as he got inside his house.</p><p>The box was lighter than he thought. He tried shaking it to get a gist of what’s inside but could not decipher what it was. Getting impatient, he took the box to his room and opened it up without any hesitation. What he saw inside was not anything he had expected.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Outgoing call: Samu</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>“Can you come here?”</em>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>“Now? Why?”</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <em>“Come here and I’ll explain.”</em>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>“Yea okay, I’m on my way.”</em> </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>He ended the call and pulled the box closer.</p><p>Curious, he looked inside it once again, picked up a few pictures that were sitting on top of the others. He was beyond confuse, <em>“who is this person in these pictures?” “When were this all taken?” “How did this box got into my house?”</em> all the questions playing around in his head.</p><p>Less than 15 minutes after his call, he heard his bestfriend knocking on his front door, calling his name to inform Suna that it was him.</p><p>Suna rushed to the front door and without any explanation, he grabbed Osamu’s hand and dragged him to his room, instructed the older boy to sit on his bed, right beside the box.</p><p>“Look at this.” Suna pointed at the box, not sparing Osamu any second to ask or say anything.</p><p>“Huh?” The older boy was obviously confused over the fuss his bestfriend was making.</p><p>“This box, look at what’s inside.” Suna repeat, now calmer as he sat down on the bed a few inches away from Osamu.</p><p>Osamu didn’t ask much about it and immediately pulled the box closer to him to check what was inside. He didn’t know which part of himself should he prepare.</p><p>Some parts of him was expecting a prank, maybe Suna put pictures of ghosts or something in the box and wanted to scare him. But that’s not like Suna so he genuinely didn’t know what to expect.</p><p>His hand fished inside the box to get a better view of what it was and what he saw in his hand was definitely nowhere near his expectation, it was pretty anti-climactic if you ask him.</p><p>“These are your pictures?” he asked, as he shuffled through the photo collection to look at each one of it.</p><p>“Yes, but no.” Suna’s answer confused him but he was so into the pictures to care.</p><p>“When were these taken?” he asked as he grabbed more pictures from the box.</p><p>“I don’t know.” The younger boy answered honestly.</p><p>“You don’t remember? Were these in high school?” he asked again, getting more interested.</p><p>“No. I mean not that I don’t remember I just… those are <em>not</em> my pictures.” That one caught Osamu’s attention.</p><p>“Not your pictures how? This is obviously you. Do you have a twin brother that I don’t know of?” Osamu took one of the pictures in his hand and turned it for Suna to see to prove his point.</p><p>“No, I don’t have a twin and yes, that’s me but… that’s not me.”</p><p>“Are you drunk? How much did you drink earlier?” he asked, more jokingly than concern.</p><p>“No, I mean look closely. Those are from recently. I mean I didn’t look like that in high school. I obviously look more mature in these pictures.” He explained, frustrated, not at Osamu but more to himself for not being able to come up with any sensible explanation.</p><p>Suna pointed at his face in the picture that Osamu was holding. The older boy followed Suna’s finger to take a closer look and indeed, the Suna in the pictures look more mature than when he was in high school. He looked a lot like the Suna in front of him right now.</p><p>But in these pictures… he was playing volleyball? As far as he remembered, the last time Suna held a volleyball was in high school and that was over 6 years ago.</p><p>“But you haven’t touched a volleyball in years.” His words came out more of a statement.</p><p>“Exactly. This is <em>not</em> me.” Suna replied, putting emphasis on the word ‘not’.</p><p>“But this is clearly you.” Osamu argued. Suna let out a heavy sigh as he really didn’t have any more explanation as to what or who exactly the person was.</p><p>As they dug deeper into the box, they found a smaller box with a small handwriting at the left corner that said <em>“filmed by: Osamu”</em>.</p><p>“What’s this?” the box caught Osamu’s attention first so he immediately took it out of the box and opened it. Other than a black hard drive, there was nothing else in the smaller box.</p><p>“What do you think is in this?” Osamu asked Suna whose attention was on something else. It was more of a rhetoric question for right after that, Osamu started to pay little to no attention to the younger boy as he was too engrossed in the hard drive in his hand.</p><p><em>“What does it mean filmed by Osamu? What did I film? When did I ever film anything? Hell, I’ve never even have my own camera to film anything to begin with. And I’ve never seen this hard drive my entire life.”</em> The questions in Osamu’s head were overflowing. Now he understood why Suna was confused. This whole thing was confusing. What even was this box?</p><p>“Samu.” Suna’s voice sounded calm but pure fear and confusion were lacing around it.</p><p>Osamu lifted his head to look at Suna and his eyes grew at the sight of the national volleyball team’s jersey in Suna’s hands.</p><p>“Is that your name on it?” he asked. The younger just nodded at the question.</p><p>This is getting too much. What is all this?</p><p>They got quiet. None of them dared to say anything. They were both too deep in their thoughts. A few minutes passed and Osamu was the one to break the silence.</p><p>“Can I borrow your laptop? I want to check what’s in this.” He lifted the hard drive in his hand.</p><p>“Yea.” Suna didn’t say much. He instantly got up and walked towards his study desk. Mountains of books and papers scattered around the desk and his laptop was placed right at the centre.</p><p>Suna returned to his former position on the bed and placed the laptop in between them, turning it on with very little patience. Hate to wait any longer, Osamu quickly plugged in the hard drive to the laptop.</p><p>A window popped up on the screen and their eyes were wild observing the files’ names. The hard drive contained a few folders that were named after events. <strong><em>“Suna contract signing day” “Suna first match” “Osamu + Suna in Paris” “Suna Rintarou”</em></strong></p><p>“What… are these?” Suna’s voice came out shaky.</p><p>Osamu made no effort to reply as he impatiently moved the cursor and clicked on one of the folders. Each folder containing a few videos, and Suna was in each one of them.</p><p>“When did we film this?” Osamu asked, more to himself.</p><p>They watched every single video, not skipping even one of them. Neither of them said anything, and they just watched one video after another without blinking.</p><p>No comment was made, not a single word came out of their mouth. They were too focused on what they were watching on the laptop screen.</p><p>They learnt about the person in the videos, they both figured out who he was but none of them dared to say anything. They both kept it to themselves, it would be too scary if they actually talk about it. It would mean that everything was real. That this was real.</p><p>That the people in the videos were real. Suna Rintarou, the professional volleyball player who played on the national team, and Miya Osamu, a professional photographer who mostly worked with national athletes.</p><p>They were on the last folder, <strong><em>“Suna Rintarou”</em></strong> and instead of clicking on the first video like what they had done for the previous folders, Osamu decided to click on one video that caught his attention the most <strong><em>“Suna + Samu drunk late night talk”.</em></strong></p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“You know you don’t have to record everything right?” Suna asked, rolling his eyes as he saw his bestfriend setting up his favourite camera in front of them.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They were both sitting on a couch in Osamu’s studio. Beer cans and snacks scattered around on the coffee table.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Yes, but that would mean I won’t have any prove that this moment exists.” Osamu smiled at the camera, as he took a sip from his beer can.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Who do you even need to prove it to?” Suna sounded annoyed but that’s just how he talked when he’s drunk.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I don’t know, but I know someone will appreciate this.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>They stayed quiet for a few moments and just silently sipping the alcoholic beverages in their hands.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Suna.” Osamu broke the silence. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Hm?” Suna answered, visibly tipsy.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Do you believe in parallel universe?” Osamu asked, turning his head to look outside. It was dark but the lights over the city looked like stars for Osamu’s tipsy brain.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Suna let out an airy chuckle. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Yea.” His answer was short.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Why?” The older asked, eyes still focusing on the lights outside the window.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“It just makes sense I guess.” He paused to take a sip before continued,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“The universe is fucking wide and who knows what’s going on out there. I believe there’s another me in another universe.” Another sip, this time, his lips curved into a smile. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You remember when my parents told me to choose whether I wanted to be a pro player or a teacher? I still think about it everyday. I wonder if I chose to be a teacher in another universe. What do you think my life would be if I did become a teacher?” He turned to his bestfriend as the question left his mouth.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Osamu noticed Suna’s eyes were on him so he turned to look at the younger boy.</em>
</p><p><em>“I don’t know. I think you would still be the Suna I know.”</em> <em>Not that Osamu didn’t care, but he genuinely thought Suna would stay as the Suna he knew no matter what he chose to be, or more like he was hoping for Suna to stay as he was.</em></p><p>
  <em>“You think I am the same person as I used to be? Like back in school?” Suna was avoiding Osamu’s gaze. His eyes were focusing on his fingers that were fidgeting around the can in his hand, like it was the most interesting view in the world. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What do you mean?” Rather than confused, Osamu was more like trying to deny that Suna had changed. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“So many things changed, people changed, I changed. Sometimes I wonder what would my life be if I chose to be a teacher instead. Would I be able to smile more than I do today?” Osamu’s face dropped at Suna’s question. He had been denying the changes he saw in Suna but he knew. He knew the younger boy knew how much he had changed. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Osamu was one of the few who knew the struggles Suna went through over the past years in order to achieve where he was now. The smile on Suna’s face faded over the past year – not that the boy smiled that much during his younger days but now, smile seemed so foreign on him. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The calm on his face was now replaced by the constant frown. He looked tense. Osamu almost forgotten how the old Suna looked like.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Yea, you need to smile more.” The words came out of Osamu’s mouth as a joke but deep down, he meant it. He wanted to see his friend smiling more. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He wanted Suna to enjoy what he was doing instead of pushing off his limits just because other people expecting him to. He wanted Suna to enjoy volleyball as something that made him happy instead of something that’s eating him from the inside like a parasite. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I only don’t smile for you.” Suna replied, inviting laughter to erupt from his bestfriend before he joined in the fun. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Heavy sighs filled the room as the laptop screen turned black.</p><p>“So they are… our parallel universe?” Osamu asked, still trying to take everything in. It made no sense to him but is there any other explanation for this?</p><p>“National player?” Suna’s voice was soft, almost unheard of.</p><p>“So somewhere in the world, I managed to achieve my dream of becoming the national player?” He was mostly talking to himself.</p><p>It was almost hard to believe what he just watched. A part of him was frustrated that he couldn’t be the one who achieved that dream, but another part of him was glad that at least one of them got to live his biggest dream.</p><p>“Suna…” Osamu called, eyes focussing on the laptop screen as he hovered the cursor on one of the many videos in the folder.</p><p>
  <strong> <em>“Suna Rintarou: January 25<sup>th</sup>, 1996 – January 31<sup>st</sup>, 2021”</em> </strong>
</p><p>“What the fuck…” Suna cursed under his breath.</p><p>With a double click on the mousepad, the video player window popped up and indeed as they were expecting, a video of a funeral was playing.</p><p>Instead of the usual Osamu-styled videos like the others, the video was more like an edited version of videos from the media; news reporting that the 25-year-old national volleyball player, Suna Rintarou, passed away from overdosing.</p><p>“Suicide?” Suna rhetorically asked himself.</p><p>The few minutes of the video felt like hours for Suna. <em>“But why?” “What happened?” </em> These questions kept repeating in his head.</p><p>The screen went black for a few second before a crying Osamu appeared.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“You fought well” was the first thing he said. He paused for what felt like the longest minute, before continued,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I know you fought well. You held on for so long. And I want you to know that I’m proud of you. You tried your best. You reached out to me more times than I could wish for and from that alone I could tell that you really fought it. You tried to stop yourself a few times, you tried to tell me about it, I know it’s hard to fight it but the fact that you held on for this long is enough for me to say I’m proud of you.” He wiped the brimming tears in his eyes. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Volleyball was something you’ve loved since you were born, something you had been wanting to do for life. Seeing you living up your dream was one of the best things I’ve seen my entire life. I’m glad you chose to keep playing. But a part of me wished you hadn’t chosen this path. It pained me to see you suffer over something you genuinely love to do. When you pushed yourself over your limit to be the best, to reach everyone’s expectations on you. It pained me to see you suffered when you’re doing something you loved with your whole heart.” A long sigh escaped his mouth, stopping himself from spilling more tears.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Yes, I’m pretty mad at you because you could at least tell me first but that’s dumb because why would you, right? But, you know I can never get mad at you for too long. I’m gonna miss you, Suna. I hope you find your happiness up there.” He wiped his tears with the sleeve of his suit for the last time before reaching for the camera to end the recording.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>“Fuck.” Osamu wiped his whole face with his palm. He didn’t notice the streak of tears rolling down his face until it fell on his hand.</p><p>“This can’t be real.” Suna knew denying it would be of no use but what else could he do? Be happy?</p><p>Should he cry? No, he couldn’t bring himself to cry. Who even was this person for him to cry over his death?</p><p>Osamu turned to look at Suna who had a deadpan expression on his face, like he wasn’t affected by the video at all.</p><p>“So… we are living in the parallel universe?” Suna asked, lifting his head to look at his red-eyed bestfriend.</p><p>“We are their parallel universe and they are our parallel universe.” Osamu sounded calm, or so he thought. Suna could still hear the shaking in his voice, probably from the crying but he paid no attention to it.</p><p>“They probably get to live out the dreams that we couldn’t achieve. When you contemplated on whether to pursue your volleyball dream or settle with a stable job, and when I couldn’t make a choice between being a chef or a photographer. I guess whatever choice we made in this world, they made the opposite choice in their world. Which is fair I guess.” His voice getting softer towards the end.</p><p>“But…” Suna chuckled, instead of an amusing one, it sounded cynical in Osamu’s ears.</p><p>“Isn’t it unfair for them?”</p><p>“Why is that?” The older furrowed her brows, confusion plastered on his face.</p><p>“They got to achieve something we both couldn’t, they both gained more than what we had from this world, but in the end…” he paused.</p><p>“In the end… they never had the happiness that we get from this world.”</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much for reading! I've been wanting to write an parallel universe au and I finally did it!! And Suna as a kindergarten teacher is just something I need at least once in my life so I'll take one for the team and present it for you guys to read. I had fun writing this so I hope everyone of you had fun reading it. Love ❤️</p></blockquote></div></div>
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